Roman Polanski: Wanted And Desired

Every article written about the controversial director Roman Polanski for the past three decades has made a footnote out of the following three biographical facts: He escaped the Nazis in Krakow as a child while his mother did not; his pregnant wife Sharon Tate was brutally murdered by the Manson clan; and he fled the United States to avoid sentencing for a statutory rape indictment. That last footnote is making headlines again with Polanski’s recent surprise arrest and extradition proceedings in Switzerland, and there seems no better time than now to catch up on the facts of this sordid affair with the insightful documentary Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired. Director Marina Zenovich’s indictment on celebrity-obsessed culture traces the blundering judicial process that led to Polanski’s exodus and recent events.

No other filmmaker has inspired such passionate “sympathy for the devil” mixed emotions outside of his films than Roman Polanski. Polanski’s tragic life began with firsthand experience of the holocaust and gained momentum when his expecting wife met her gruesome fate. But how do you amalgamate sympathy and disgust with a perverted 43-year-old man who coerces a 13-year-old girl with champagne and quaalude before raping her? Zenovich, wisely, doesn’t even try to question your compassion or your repulsion. She recounts the director’s lurid life, mixing archival photographs and clips from his own masterpieces -- like Rosemary’s Baby and Chinatown -- and allows you to feel how you will.

However, Zenovich’s focus is not so much Polanski as the media’s handling of the events and the judicial process undertaken in his trial. It’s the only topic she can take an unbiased and firm stance on and she doesn’t even have to have a Michael Moore-like narration to do so. She allows her balanced images, headlines and testimonies to speak for themselves. The film recounts how the media coverage, public outrage and even gossip spiraled out of control and influenced the case to go positively absurd.

Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired finds the celebrity-obsessed and media-courting judge in charge of the trial, Laurence J. Rittenband, guilty of fumbling his duties to an inflammatory extent. Zenovich discovers side deals that were reneged on, performances made in court and decisions based on gossip, all of which robbed a fair trial from both Polanski and his victim. And unlike most documentaries, Wanted and Desired finds almost every party involved -- be it Polanski’s friends, victim, lawyer, or prosecutor -- all in agreement: with a trial and judge this f*cked up, they would flee the country too.

Some might confuse Zenovich’s indictment on the judge as a cop-out in judging Polanski. But the facts remain. There’s no further insight into the heinous crime. Nor is there a new judgment to be passed on the man who committed it. Anyone looking for new reasons to love or hate Polanski will be disappointed, but there’s no shortage of emotions to be felt when watching this summation of a life that harbors so much shock and awe, and the scandalous trial that was so clouded by stupidity and double standards.

While Zenovich stays neutral on Polanski, she has a fearless, head-on approach to his notoriety. A shot of Polanski’s victim Samantha Geimer presented to that creepy-ass humming from Rosemary’s Baby is a hit to the gut. This is definitely more than a mere footnote.